Talk:Sex education/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Biased External Links

While this article is NPOV, the external links brought at the end of it aren't. They both support only one side of the debate, and, furthermore, the second of them is a parody site. While I support this POV, I nevertheless believe these links should be removed, or other links, supporting the opposite side, should be added. Volland 12:29, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Also regarding this topic, I have added links regarding the question of whether homosexuality is a choice or not to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth section. It was POV-unbalanced when including only the current view of the heavily lobbied APA. Enviroknot

Use or abuse?

'Use' is a statement of fact. 'Abuse' is a pov. Unless you can say who thought it was an abuse, let's stick to saying it was use. Guttlekraw 00:03, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You seem to be having difficulty with NPOV, as well as understanding context. Without citing sources, you altered a direct quote in the section, "Scientific study of sex education". This text referenced an article by Botvin et al. You altered the text to read, Botvin et al. found that school based programmes to prevent recreational drug use during junior high school (what the program advocates believed to be drug abuse, although many other jurisdictions including the French and British legal systems do not agree). This is entirely your point of view, and in fact introduces several errors into the article, including the modification of a direct quote which is considered very bad form on your part. According to PubMed, Botvin's area of research is drug abuse prevention, not "recreational drug use". Further, the study in question (Botvin et al. "Long-term follow-up results of a randomized drug abuse prevention trial in a white middle-class population". JAMA 1995; 273: 1106-1112) does not use the term recreational drug use. They use the term, drug abuse prevention, as does DiCenso's study which references Botvin. In point of fact, you changed a direct quote from the study (Botvin et al found that school based programmes to prevent drug abuse during junior high school (ages 12-14 years) resulted in important and durable reductions...) as quoted by DiCenso in "Interventions to reduce unintended pregnancies among adolescents: systematic review of randomised controlled trials". When I restored the actual quote that you had changed, you accused me of vandalism on my talk page. You also failed to substantiate your claim that, ...program advocates believed to be drug abuse, although many other jurisdictions including the French and British legal systems do not agree. You introduced this argument into this article. That argument is not supported by the context of either study, nor have you provided any sources for this claim. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. --Viriditas | Talk 03:03, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You are clearly very committed to you point of view. I cannot be bothered to pull out which statutes in UK and French law allow use of alcohol by 14 year olds, but they are there for anyone to see. Clearly the program advocates believed that alchol use by 14 year olds is abuse, clearly there are others who beleive that not all use of alcohol by 14 year olds is abuse. If you can look at the facts and still keep your fingers in your ears singing 'la-la-la-I'm-not-listening' then fine. I'll leave this to someone else to deal with. Guttlekraw 16:24, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Please read and study the NPOV policy. You are not allowed to change direct quotes to suit your own personal bias. You are welcome to add new content or sections as long as it is topical or adheres to the recommended guidelines and policies. If you are interested in recreational drug use, you could experiment with NPOV by contributing to that article. --Viriditas | Talk 19:54, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't wish to get into this particular debate, but I was hoping that someone that is involved might be able to improve the reference in the article itself. Currently the only reference to "Botvin et al" in the article is at the end of the quote. Making it quite hard to varify the quote, since the citation is not clear (unless I missed something). Can we please improve the reference so readers don't have to read this discussion to find the original source? It seems to be this should be done by someone familiar with the resource. --Ahc 05:08, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No problem. I'll do it tonight. Thanks for the heads up. --Viriditas | Talk 06:15, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Illustration

I would like to introduce a historical aspect to this discussion, part of which would be an illustration of a young man asking his father for advice on dealing with his suitors. Here is the image, any thoughts? Haiduc 00:32, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Youth seeking his father's advice on love
Miniature illustration to the Haft Awrang of Jami, in the story A Father Advises his Son About Love See Sufi outlook on male love
Freer and Sackler Galleries, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Mini-debate trimmed

This section on LGBT:

"Opponents of abstinence-only education would say that this viewpoint is religiously-based and thus has no validity in public education; and furthermore, that sexual orientation (as opposed to behavior) cannot be learned and is not a choice, so exposure to homosexuality could only cause a lesbian, or gay person to be more self-accepting and could not cause a straight person to “turn” lesbian or gay. The assertion that “homosexuality is not a choice” is contradicted by most sources in the medical and scientific communities1 2."

It looks to me like a little debate on homosexuality. I trimmed and precised it to the relevant issues. The question of whether homosexuality is or is not a choice is surely better covered elsewhere. Irrespective of whether it is a choice, homosexuals are affected by the decisions of educators and politicians with respect to sex education. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 16:22, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Moderate POV Fix, 2nd Paragraph 3.1 "GLBT..."

Just to let you know...I did some NPOVing of what appeared to be moderate point-of-view in the second paragraph of what is currently 3.1 (the GLBT paragraph).

Improvement Drive

The articles on Teenage pregnancy and on Flirting has been nominated on Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. To support the nomination, vote for it Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive#Nominations here.--Fenice 07:08, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

What the hell is this...?!

"Keeping children in the dark about sex isn’t going to stop them from partaking in the act 2. Parents seem to think that if they don’t teach their teenagers about sex, they won’t have it, which just isn’t true at all 3. The Netherlands reports low pregnancy rates among its teenagers; their approach has been what are known as social interventions 4(six concepts listed above). A school-based education youth development program “remains the most efficient way of reaching the greatest number of young people before they become sexually active 5.” The United States has been focusing on abstinence only programs. Studies have shown that while teenagers may sign up for “chastity pledges” and promise to delay sexual intercourse until marriage, this just isn’t the case. This group of teenagers run the risk of not using condoms or other methods of contraceptives, and usually has levels of sexually transmitted diseases as high as other teenagers 6."

What kind of biased crap is that? I am too lazy to change that right now but somebody should. Whoever wrote that is not only a moronic liberal, but also obviously never passed second grade seeing as they never learned to be grammatically correct. Silly liberals...

Sex pairing

An unknown user removed the following from the article:

Sex pairing

---

There is also the idea that among other things, school curricula ought to, in addition to the more widespread tradition of phys-ed class, include a sex-ed class which would give the opportunity to students to engage in sexual activity which they may otherwise neglect prior to graduation.

One idea involves the pairing up of individuals by a central authority, another would see students select their own partners using computers.

This idea has, however, met with a healthy degree of skepticism. So far, reactions to the plan have been unenthusiastic. Overall, it is deemed to be a worthless addition to the otherwise sober discussion of school curricula.

I'm not sure that this is necessarily worthy of inclusion, particulalrly without a reference, but it seemed to me that it should at least have been discussed via the talk page. Has anyone encountered or heard of this phenomenon outside of this page? --Badger151 02:03, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

"...which would give the opportunity to students to engage in sexual activity..." You're saying you don't see that section as blatant wishful-thinking vandalism? Powers ^T 23:10, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Worthy of inclusion or not, the practice of "managed sexual couplings" goes beyond the matrimonial parental matchmaking often seen in traditional cultures to include exotic practices socially mandated by notable sects like the Oneida_Society, a radical minority Christian community of the 19th century USA. In particular, see the cited Wikipedia article section on the doctrine of "Ascending fellowship" in which couplings between youngsters and oldsters - call it "sex gym" if you like (Aside: "gym" derives from "nude") - were seriously advocated as having educational and spiritual benefits, among others!

For a detailed scholarly perspective, see the Oneida Community collection at New York's Syracuse University. For a short recent populist romp, see the book by Sarah Vowell [http://www.amazon.com/Assassination-Vacation-Sarah-Vowell/dp/0743260031 Assassination Vacation].

The concept certainly fits within the scope of this article, as does the Ghotul tradition of the Muria people, where pre-adults (from the ages of seven to about eighteen, if I remember right, live in their own community and are encouraged to be promiscuous among themselves, with no regard to age or sex. Apparently the Muria are a society that knows no marital infidelity. Haiduc 05:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology at Berlin's Humboldt University claims it is "The World's Largest Website on Human Sexuality." It includes this work in progress: Growing Up Sexually..., "a survey of anthropological literature" by a physician in the Netherlands. It discusses the Ghotul tradition of the aforementioned Muria here. Similar profiles for many hundreds of ethnic groups are here, with alternative super-grouping by political state here. The generic section on historical Europe is more colorful than many might anticipate.

A related completed work with coarser ethnic granularity concerned with all of sexuality, The International Encyclopedia of Sexuality, is also hosted by the same archive here.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.78.58.7 (talk) 16:52, 14 December 2006

Weasel Words

I did a copyedit on the article, and I am removing the weasel words tag. I didn't see anything that seems to apply, aand there are no comments that seem to indicate why it was added. Please discuss here if you feel differently. Atom 10:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

LGBT Youth

This section is incredibly biased against conservative opinion and takes every oppurtunity to present conservative and Christian views as unwarranted, outdated, uncaring and also Dangerous. There are tens of millions of conservative thinking people in the world, does their opinion count for nothing but to be shot down in flames by liberal minds? I thought articles had to be un-biased and show both sides of the argument! It seems as though only the liberal opinion counts on Wikipedia, and that opinion seems to be that thousands of LGBT kids are on anti-depressants or killing themselves, who would otherwise be happy normal kids but for conservative views!!!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cole1982 (talk • contribs) 19:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

The last two paragraphs present both viewpoints; you are free to edit the opening paragraph if you consider that it is opinion rather than a statement of fact. The view you disagree with is not unscrutinised either. Aren't you wanting your viewpoint to remain unchallenged? Where in this response am I exhaling flames? Philip Cross 07:53, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

LGBT section mixes two issues

The LGBT section seems to mix two things. Teaching about various sexual practices, and teaching about homosexual relationships. Most of the practices are available to, and to some degree practiced by heterosexual couples, so covering these practices w/ relation to safety is apropos everyone. Shouldn't be linked as is here to make seem just relates to LGBT. Relationship/etc. discussion of LGBT issues, etc. of course also deserves coverage, just confusing to intertwine the two. Zodon (talk) 20:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Scope of article

The current article talks about school-based programs exclusively, except for the Africa section which talks about government public health campaigns.

I think sex education provided by parents could also be addressed, as well as more information on government or other group public health campaigns (such as the ads on public TV in Europe demonstrating correct common use, or the U.S. company Merck's "Tell Someone" campaign to spread awareness of HPV). I would have to do research to find sources to add specific examples, but for a start I'm wanting to expand the introduction to say something along the lines of Common avenues for sex education are parents or caregivers, school programs, and public health campaigns. Lyrl ^Talk _Contribs 17:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Overall VERY good article, though US section has problems.

The article is very well done, has plenty of information on pretty much Global Sex Education (What about sex education in Isreal though?, i've always wondered about that..)

VERY HIGH LEVEL of NPOV statements etc. If a concerned parent were to look at it I HIGHLY doubt they'd be scared off by this article.

It is a much needed change from the biased hounding of other sexuality based articles (Especially those dealing with adolescents and children) And I think that it does a GREAT job of fulfilling its purpose.

However, some text which seems to be copied from the article on adolescent sexuality, which is currently under dispute and protected because of disagreements over these and similar statements is sitting unnoticed in the US section of this article. It seems COMPLETELY out of place and like a bid for sneaking in 'not very well hidden' conservative and/or POV'd statements aplenty.

It goes as follows.

Almost 60% of adults think that sexually active teenagers should have easy access to contraception.[2]

Below this line is the copied'data'

Increasingly, teenage sexual encounters in the United States do not occur in the c ontext of a romantic relationship, but in an impersonal, merely sexual "hook up."[3] One thing "nearly everyone agrees on is that STDs and risky 'anything but intercourse' behaviors are rampant among teens."[4] The "impersonality of twenty-first-century adolescent sex victimizes girls" and "plenty of harm" is done to boys as well.[5] When taking part in hookups "the kids don't even look at each other. It's mechanical, dehumanizing. The fallout is that later in life they have trouble forming relationships. They're jaded."[6] This is a "profound shift in the culture of high school dating and sex."[7]

Between 1991 and 2001 the number of high school seniors in the United States who reported that they have had sexual intercourse dropped from 54% to 46%.[8] However, the "dominant form of teenage sexuality has changed" in that time period. "It is not penile-vaginal intercourse anymore. It's oral sex."[9] It is usually boys who receive oral sex, and the girls who give it. When girls provide oral sex "they do so without pleasure, usually to please their boyfriend or to avoid the possibility of pregnancy."[10] This is the "heterosexual script that entitles boys and disables girls."[11]

Now, If you people don't disagree i'l remove it and we'll try to restructure the United states section because THAT's REALLY not fitting into the article on sexual education, and while it might barely hold it's own in the adolescence and adolescent sexuality articles under heavy dispute and constant edit wars...

I doubt it can stay here for long without people REALIZING it's innapropriate content for this article.

Well, what's your views people? Nateland 22:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

• From an European point of view its quite obvious that there is a direct connection and correlation between sex education (including detailed information on contraceptives) and the policies on accessibility of contraceptions.

The changes in teenage sexual behavior can be included in the article as long as there is a direct connection to the national policies and the sources are valid. This kind of information should bee included, while the text above is utter POV. --Nemissimo II 12:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Further informationen

Beside describing international strategies and policies in detail it might be highly enlightening to document these policies' national results in teenage pregnancies and abortion rates. --Nemissimo II 12:19, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

It might be quite difficult to make a direct connection. For example, The Netherlands is often given as an example of a country with comprehensive sex ed and little teen pregnancy. However, we can't assume that one leads to the other. Correlation does not imply causation. Dutch culture values hard work and educational achievement, and maybe this is more important than sex ed in discouraging young girls from getting pregnant. Also, Tunisia has a similarly low rate and yet a different approach to sex ed and openness. Fionah 09:32, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm in the Netherlands on a regular basis and I can assure you that the differences in everyday life of teens and twens in northern Europe are negligible on a cultural level. The information should still be given. Comparing a western and a typical Muslim culture is very different to comparing two western societies with similar basic cultural circumstances. --Nemissimo II 17:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that making a direct connection between sex ed and teen pregnancy/abortion rates could be seen as taking a particular POV. Personally, I think there is a connection but it's far from the most important factor (for example, teen pregnancy is much higher in inner city London than in the UK Midlands, altho presumably they have a similar type of sex ed.) Also, too much info that is not directly about sex ed could overwhelm the article and get into too many POV/relevance disputes. Links to the appropriate articles about teenage pregnancy and abortion rates worldwide would work better, IMHO. Fionah 09:47, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

POV text

The text below doesn't even TALK about sexual education. It was placed there by User:Illuminato during a sort of edit war in another article he was insisting on keeping that exact same text inside of and so he copied a bunch of it to other articles where it might concievably fit.

The below text is only opinions about adolescent sexuality expressed as fact and should be deleted (In mine others POV's). i'll give a few days for discussion. Then depending on the answer me or someone else will take action.

Disputed text While according to Leonard Sax, author of the book Why Gender Matters "Increasingly, teenage sexual encounters in the United States do not occur in the context of a romantic relationship, but in an impersonal, merely sexual "hook up."[3] One thing "nearly everyone agrees on is that STDs and risky 'anything but intercourse' behaviors are rampant among teens."[4] The "impersonality of twenty-first-century adolescent sex victimizes girls" and "plenty of harm" is done to boys as well.[5] When taking part in hookups "the kids don't even look at each other. It's mechanical, dehumanizing. The fallout is that later in life they have trouble forming relationships. They're jaded."[6] This is a "profound shift in the culture of high school dating and sex."[7]

Between 1991 and 2001 the number of high school seniors in the United States who reported that they have had sexual intercourse dropped from 54% to 46%.[8] However, the "dominant form of teenage sexuality has changed" in that time period. "It is not penile-vaginal intercourse anymore. It's oral sex."[9] It is usually boys who receive oral sex, and the girls who give it. When girls provide oral sex "they do so without pleasure, usually to please their boyfriend or to avoid the possibility of pregnancy."[10] This is the "heterosexual script that entitles boys and disables girls."[11] Nateland 19:41, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree. The section on the United States is really bad. After reading this, I still have no idea about what is actually taught in American schools. It's as if the article about mathematics education discussed the controversies about student-centered and standards-centered learning, but never bothered to mention addition or calculus. I think the religious education article is a pretty good model to follow in this regard: details about the curriculum and debates are presented in an NPOV manner, and not spuriously linked to external factors such as church attendance or societal ethics. Fionah 12:32, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ainlina (talk • contribs) 08:19, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

What I would expect to see in the United States section

In the section about sex ed in the U.S., I would expect to read something like this:

In the United States, sex education is taught from grade 6 and includes topics such as puberty, pregnancy, STIs, and relationships. There are two main forms of sex education taught in American schools: abstinence-only and comprehensive. Abstinence-only sex education tells teenagers that they should be sexually abstinent until marriage and does not provide information about contraception. Comprehensive sex education covers abstinence as a positive choice but also teaches about contraception and STI-avoidance. Programs vary across different states and also depend on the type of school, for example state schools have different programs to religious schools.

Sex education is a controversial subject in the United States. Proponents of comprehensive sex education argue that sexual behavior after puberty is a given, and it is therefore crucial to provide information about the risks and how they can be minimized; they also claim that abstinence-only education denies teens needed, factual information and leads to unwanted pregnancies and STIs. Proponents of abstinence-only sex education object to curricula that fail to teach moral behavior; they maintain that conventional (or conservative) morality is "healthy and constructive" and that value-free knowledge of the body may lead to immoral, unhealthy and harmful practices. A 2007 study found that middle school students showed similar levels of sexual activity, no matter which type of sex education they received.

I kind-of made up some of the info here (e.g. i have no idea in what grade sex ed starts), but you get the idea. Say what is taught in the different types of program, introduce the controversy in an NPOV-way and without undue weight, and leave out all the journalists speculating about teenage sexual behaviour. Fionah 21:23, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree--I think the section needs to be rewritten and some of the detail surrounding abstinence-only sex education (particularly the growing summary of studies on its effectiveness or lack thereof) should be moved to the article on that topic. However, it's tremendously difficult to generalize, because even public schools define the curriculum very differently state by state. I will research a source from which generalized statements could be drawn, but if anyone else has thoughts, perhaps in the meantime we can continue to discuss here. --Sfmammamia 22:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I have made an attempt at a rewrite as described above. Next I will move some of the detailed info to the abstinence-only sex education article -- Sfmammamia 01:10, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Scientific study of sex education

The "Scientific study of sex education" section concentrates on abstinence-only education. Have there been any studies of the effectiveness (or not) of other forms of sex education? Fionah 20:08, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Interessting Campain

Maybe someone can use this interessting example How Pregnancy Happens somehow. ;-) --Nemissimo 18:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Teachers TV link

This link Teachers' TV was spammed to the page by an IP whose only additions are to add links to Teachers.tv site to various articles. It does not focus on sex education but covers various social and health issues and even when it's focus is sex it isn't about sex education but rather it is one instance of sex education. The link was removed by Hu12 but restored by Simonxag. I think it should go but, given the reverts, thought it best to raise the issue here and solicit comment before proceeding. -- SiobhanHansa 16:13, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I reverted the link based on its content rather than who originally added it. I can see none of the commercial material noramlly found on "spam" sites. The site is funded by the DfES (Department for Education and Science), the UK education ministry and is a resource base for teachers. Sex, as part of a general social/health teaching is very much where British sex education is at. --Simon Speed (talk) 17:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

As I say above - it isn't a very good link for the article because it isn't specifically about sex education. On the first page of the link at the moment there are videos on drugs, stress, drinking, nutrition and entrepreneurship, but none about sex. Links that are too broad are recommended against by our external links guideline. We shouldn't be pointing our readers to a page that is not obviously relevant to the article when they click on the link. (To be fair the whole section looks like it needs a good sweep through). The fact that it is just an example of sex education rather than being further coverage of the issues around sex education is another reason to think it's not appropriate content. -- SiobhanHansa 19:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)